Water. Surrounded her from every direction on the huge cruise ship. She loved being out in the ocean, looking out as far as she could see and seeing nothing but water.
Her husband, on the other hand...
"Honey, please get up. Open your eyes and see!"
He shook his head, grasping tighter to his paper bag. "Shouldn't have allowed you to talk me into this...never should have listened to you."
She sighed, thinking her husband sounded so sickly and confused. Sad thing is he never threw up, loaded up on motion sickness meds weeks in advanced, and he barely felt...
The sun brushed against the back of her neck as she walked towards the corral. Her hands fidgeted with the rope, looping it and unlooping it, her fingers running along the rough hemp braids, pausing at the bands of electrical tape marking hand holds.
Gus held his hand out to help her up onto the fence as she reached the edge of the corral, a smile splitting his tanned face. "You ready?" he asked, his voice a hoarse rasp.
She nodded as she reached the top of the fence. Inside the corral, her horse stood saddled, its side pressing against...
I read a story today, a true one, about a young man who hung himself at the age of twenty-three.
His story was horrific. The abuse he received as a child ruined him both physically and mentally and, apparently, emotionally.
It is so sad to hear about loss of young, talented people; even more so when it's the result of unspeakable evil done to them by pieces of shit that deserve a hell that Dante couldn't possibly imagine.
Hug your kids.
Listen to your friends.
Be kind. Always be kind. There is help out there, but you might not think...
Bocci. Bocci ball. Bowling on a lawn. That's what I was doing in that old photo. But strange. Usually you bowl with other people. Usually there's markings on the ground, a target ball to shoot from. In the photo, I'm just standing there in the middle of the lawn, facing the house. My house? God, I don't know whose house that is. It could be a field house, or a club house, and I'm playing bocci, a game I don't know how to play, have never, as far as I'm aware, ever played before in my life, and I'm hunched...
She'd always come running when I called. I could have called her to come get a splinter out of my hand, to help me with my homework, to get me out from the tree in my backyard, or just so I could see her smiling face for hours as we talked. I was so use to this that the idea that some day she wouldn't come running when I called never even crossed my mind. I loved her with every single particle that made up my body.
At this exact moment though the only thought I could think was that...
Running had always been an expression of freedom. That's how she had always seen it. The wind whipping through her hair, tugging at her clothes as her feet moved so fast that she felt like she was flying. AS though for just that moment, she was soaring above the ground, close enough to the clouds to touch them.
But then she began to notice the strings. The tiny threads, invisible against the light, that were attached to her clothes, hooked into her skin, threaded through to her soul.
When had that happen? When had she become the marionette? The freedom...
He set the plate before her. She looked at him with greedy eyes. Seth sighed as he walked back to the kitchens. This is how it was every Thursday. She'd come in, sit, ask specifically for him and order. She had an unhealthy fascination with him that he found weird and he shuddered every time he saw her.
It was becoming more frequent, the amount of times he saw her. He'd see her at the bus stop, when he walked home from the apartment, and obviously at work. He wanted to find out what it was she wanted with him,...
They were trapped for seven days. God's work was able to be done in freedom: the dividing line between earth and sky, earth and ocean, the fecund fields with animals and birds, the oceans teeming with fish and monsters, the two legged animals - human beings - created to carry God's hope.
But the forces of chaos, of tohu and bohu, were chained for those seven days; trapped and kept away from the great work of creation.
There was order at work: chaos was trapped. There was fertility abounding: destruction was stayed. There was ingenuity in creation: blankness was put...
He’d always thought of Malory as a cat person. She referred to cats in conversation energetically and often, so when he visited her apartment he expected to meet a few. Malory set him straight. She was two when her parents gave Bo and Greco away. Mama and Dad, three children under four, an ailing dog and two cats were too much. They could not all be borne. Rip was on meds for anxiety, his pee pooling in the old floorboards. The cats threw his kibble at him and shed disdainful tufts. When Rip and the baby both stopped sleeping through...
The sheep were at pasture and he tried not to disturb them as he jumped over the fence and darted across the field. He had to keep moving, if he stopped they would catch him, if they caught him they would kill him. It was a game, he was the odd one out, he'd been playing along, thought he was include but no, they'd kept him out, always kept him separate so they could use him. When the moment was right, when the moment had come, they had pounced. One had circled around him while the others continued to dance....